Thursday, July 25, 2013

Daily in the morning most of us eat our staple food of
rice; some of us eat rice for lunch and again for dinner too ……… for a typical
Tamilian the food is never complete with curd rice ! The
eminent agricultural scientist M.S. Swaminathan remarked in a Forum
that India needs an "Evergreen
Revolution" to increase productivity without harming the environment. He said, "If cultivation of land is
continued without conservation of soil fertility and replacement of large local
varieties of plants with one or two varieties, then there will be a disastrous
effect, so we must have a 'Evergreen Revolution' in terms of increasing
productivity without perpetuating any associated ecological harm,".

Green Revolution refers to a series of research,
development, and technology transfer initiatives, occurring between the 1940s
and the late 1970s, that increased agriculture production worldwide,
particularly in the developing world, beginning most markedly in the late
1960s. Dr. MS Swaminathan is known as the "Father of the Green Revolution
in India". Globally, it was led by Norman Borlaug, who earned the
sobriquet "Father of the Green Revolution" credited with saving over
a billion people from starvation, involved the development of high-yielding
varieties of cereal grains, expansion of irrigation infrastructure, modernization
of management techniques, distribution of hybridized seeds, synthetic
fertilizers, and pesticides to farmers. The term "Green Revolution"
was first used in 1968 by former United States Agency for International
Development (USAID) director William Gaud, who noted the spread of the new
technologies.

Back home, Mankombu Sambasivan
Swaminathan, an Indian geneticist and international administrator, was
renowned for his leading role in India's "Green
Revolution," a program under which high-yield varieties of wheat and rice
seedlings were planted in the fields of poor farmers. From 1972 to 1979 he was
director general of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, and he was
minister of Agriculture from 1979 to 1980. He served as director general of the
International Rice Research Institute (1982–88) and became president of the
International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources in
1988. In 1999, Time magazine placed him in the Time 20 list of most influential
Asian people of the 20th century.

Norman Ernest Borlaug (1914 – 2009) known as the Father
of Green revolution worldwide was an
American agronomist, humanitarian and Nobel laureate. who has been called "the father of the
Green Revolution". Besides the Nobel Peace Prize, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the
Congressional Gold Medal; also awarded
the Padma Vibhushan, India's
second highest civilian honor. During the mid-20th century, Borlaug led the
introduction of these high-yielding varieties combined with modern agricultural
production techniques to Mexico,
Pakistan, and India.

In 1961 India
was on the brink of mass famine. Borlaug was invited to India by the
adviser to the Indian minister of agriculture M. S. Swaminathan. Despite
bureaucratic hurdles imposed by India's
grain monopolies, the Ford Foundation and Indian government collaborated import
wheat seed from CIMMYT. Punjab was selected by
the Indian government to be the first site to try the new crops because of its
reliable water supply and a history of agricultural success. India began its
own Green Revolution program of plant breeding, irrigation development, and
financing of agrochemicals.

India also adopted IR8 – a semi-dwarf
rice variety developed by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) that
could produce more grains of rice per plant when grown with certain fertilizers
and irrigation. In 1968, Indian agronomist S.K. De Datta published his findings
that IR8 rice yielded about 5 tons per hectare with no fertilizer, and almost
10 tons per hectare under optimal conditions. This was 10 times the yield of
traditional rice. IR8 was a success throughout Asia,
and dubbed the "Miracle Rice". IR8 was also developed into Semi-dwarf
IR36.

There is something more on rice – of a
country’s whose politics is mired with rice now….. more of it in a later post…

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